During voting season, citizens are thoroughly encouraged to take to the polls, but voting is no easy task. In an effort to increase voter knowledge/turnout, How to VOTE will provide easy to understand and useful tools for voters. This project, in its full glory, will function as a hub of information, ranging from the roles of officials in government in simple terms, understanding a ballot, getting candidate information, and finding your polling location.
As previously stated, the end goal of How to VOTE is to increase voter turnout at the polls and ensure better representation of the American people. For National Day of Civic Hacking, we tackled the “where” component of our overall problem by coming up with a simple to use tool to find your polling location, as well as early voting locations. The user of the application enters their street address and the application instantly returns their assigned poll locationon a familiar “Maps” layout, as well as their early voter location options. The map features other important information such as hours of operation and when the poll opens and closes. From the context menu for the location, the user will also be able to get directions to their polling location through their preferred navigation app (Waize, Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc)
The mock up for our iOS application shows a general overview of the layout, in the future we would like to incorporate additional knowledge hubs as previously mentioned, as well as additional functionality in the form of an interactive ballot to teach new voters the correct procedures when they get to the poll booth. Furthermore, we would like to expand this software to Android platforms, and potentially web-based as well.
Mockup of search by address functionality
- Xcode v9.0
If you'd like to contribute, come to a meetup, join our slack, or fork the project and create a pull request.
Code for Orlando, a local Code for America brigade, brings the community together to improve Orlando through technology. We are a group of "civic hackers" from various disciplines who are committed to volunteering our talents to make a difference in the local communmity through technology. We unite to improve the way the community, visitors, and local government experience Orlando.